Silence
by ridiculousFolly
Summary: BEING REWRITTEN. PROLOGUE UP. Ronald Weasley, due to his own reasonings has begun a self-imposed vow of silence, which has landed himself in a mental hospital. Stuck in the last place he wanted to be, Ron has to find a way to be heard without his voice.
1. Prologue

**Silence **

**-Prologue-**

**Rated: **T for language and content.  
**Pairings:** SEE BOTTOM AUTHORS NOTE IN CHAPTER ONE.  
**Disclaimer:** Not rich, ergo, not mine. I do envy J.K. Rowling though, in both her skills and her genius.  
**Warnings:** Eventual Male x Male pairings, but nothing of the sort for the first couple of chapters. Language.  
**Summary: **If you clicked on this, you should have read the summary. I don't know what I typed. I just wrote some words. Just read the story, and hope you can get it on your own.  
**Beginning Author Note: **Eh, some minor edits here. Important things to talk about in Chapter one. Edited for the joy it brings me to mess with you. (psyche)

It had been months since the last time I had spoken to anyone. I had just finally been fed up, and when I had been told to "shut up" I took the words to heart. I was so used to being unnoticed, that I figured they wouldn't notice if I stopped talking anyway. My father was almost never home, and when he was he was completely exhausted, and my mother was generally more preoccupied with my siblings then she was with me.

In all honesty, they noticed a lot sooner then I thought they would, and even then it was three days before anyone brought it up. It hadn't even been one of my parents who had noticed. My older twin brothers had been messing with me and had realized that I had failed to give my usual response to one of their ever painful, verbal jabs.

From that point on, they had dedicated their entire lives to getting me to speak again. They went as far as to get my teachers at school to repeatedly call on me, eventually getting me in a fair amount of trouble for refusal to comply in the classroom.

But none of that really mattered to me. I was going to be invisible.

---

It had been a couple of weeks since I'd spoken I suppose. I wasn't really counting the days, I was just keeping a vague idea of how long it had been.

My mother had been determined to make me speak, and so had gone through any emotion she could think of to try to get me started. Screaming, crying, violence, the whole deal. But I hadn't given in. I just just continued to go on the way I was, and remain completely silent.

Eventually she gave up. I guess she just got tired of arguing in the end, so she just quit. It didn't really matter to me all that much, it wasn't going to do anything to help anyway.

I was to far gone for anything like that to really matter.

---

She warned me before it happened. Weeks in advance. She told me that I had three weeks to speak up, or that I was going to go away, to somewhere where they could "help" me. I would have told her I didn't care, but I wasn't going to talk to her. She didn't deserve it.

---

Today, she told me to get in the car so she could take me away. So I did.

The drive there was totally silent, I of course wouldn't say anything, and my mother had chosen to take the same path as well. That was good. I didn't want to listen to her babble anyway.

When we got there, her only words to me were "get out of the car". I obliged silently, the looked at the building ahead of me. It didn't look particularly pleasant, but anywhere would be better then home.

So away from home I went.

---

**End Authors Note: **I don't really have much to say here. Just to please read chapter one, give me feed back, vote in the poll that will be up soon (after I put up chapter one), and PM or Review with ideas. (PMs will be responded to, Reviews will _not_).

Love you,

Miss Moonie.


	2. Chapter 1: Therapy

**Silence**

-Chapter 1-

**Rated:** T for language and content.  
**Pairings:** SEE BOTTOM AUTHORS NOTE.  
**Disclaimer:** Not rich, ergo, not mine. I do envy J.K. Rowling though, in both her skills and her genius.  
**Warnings:** Eventual Male x Male pairings, but nothing of the sort for the first couple of chapters.  
**Summary:** Oh good God, I don't know. Read it and make assumptions or something. I have faith that you have brains.  
**Beginning Authors Note:** PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR NOTE AT THE BOTTOM. THE CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY DEPENDS ON IT. Enjoy. :3

It had been months since the last time I had spoken to anyone. I had just finally been fed up, and when I had been told to "shut up" I took the words to heart. I was so used to being unnoticed, that I figured they wouldn't notice if I stopped talking anyway. My father was almost never home, and when he was he was completely exhausted, and my mother was generally more preoccupied with my siblings then she was with me.

In all honesty, they noticed a lot sooner then I thought they would, and even then it was three days before anyone brought it up. It hadn't even been one of my parents who had noticed. My older twin brothers had been messing with me and had realized that I had failed to give my usual response to one of their ever painful, verbal jabs.

From that point on, they had dedicated their entire lives to getting me to speak again. They went as far as to get my teachers at school to repeatedly call on me, eventually getting me in a fair amount of trouble for refusal to comply in the classroom.

But none of that really mattered to me. I was going to be invisible.

---

It had been a couple of weeks since I'd spoken I suppose. I wasn't really counting the days, I was just keeping a vague idea of how long it had been.

My mother had been determined to make me speak, and so had gone through any emotion she could think of to try to get me started. Screaming, crying, violence, the whole deal. But all of her attempts were for naught. I knew she only wanted me to speak to make herself feel better, like she had done a good job of raising me, even though we all knew she hadn't.

When she reached her breaking point, she screamed in frustration, and called my father in to do something about it. He wasn't going to be any more successful then she was, but that was alright. He at least tried to understand why I had fallen silent, rather then try to get me to speak. Sometimes he would tell me stories of his childhood, which were always interesting, but usually we just sat in a companionable silence, and waited until mom got tired of waiting and called dad off to do something else.

There were days when one of my many brothers would come up shortly after dad left and try to coerce me into speaking. The twins more often then anyone else. I wasn't any fun of them if I wouldn't freak out because of their pranks, and I had apparently thrown away my emotions along with my voice. Despite all of their fronting that I was boring now, I knew they were worried about me and it made me feel like I mattered to them, which would sometimes get a smile out of me, even on the darkest days. Upon seeing my smile, they'd make some crack about how I wasn't just an emotionless freak, and about how they must have done something right to make me smile. They would laugh, and try to goad me into talking, but always knew when to draw the line and excuse themselves, saying they'd be back later. I appreciated their promises.

I had begun to lose hope that my three eldest brothers cared about me, having not heard a word from them. Dad figured me out one day, and told me that mom had never even told them about me. She didn't want to embarrass herself in front of her own son, not that I could blame her. I wouldn't want to talk about me either, but then I didn't really want to talk about anything.

So life went on. I never did hear from Percy or Charlie, but Bill ended up coming home for a visit, and of course he noticed. How could he not? Mom had one of her freak outs about how rude it was that I wouldn't even say hello to her first child, and I just kind of stared at her like she had grown an extra head or something. It would have been really funny too, had it not made her want to hit me with the broom she happened to be holding, and forcing me out of the room. I decided it would be best to try to avoid getting mom and Bill in the same room as me. It didn't happen again while he was there. I did give him a hug before he left though. He smiled and told me it would be okay, and that I should write him if the twins or mom decided to pick on me too much. I practically beamed at him for not trying to make me talk, and he told me that I had made his day with that smile. He always was my favorite brother.

So life went on as it's known too, and things kind of fell into a norm. I wouldn't talk, mom would yell at me for not talking, dad would reassure me that it was okay, the twins would make fun of me while reassuring me at the same time (I never did figure out how they did that) and then Ginny would alternate sides of the argument depending on what she wanted to get from whom. Usually she took my side, but she did stay out of it when it seemed prudent to get what she wanted. She was crafty like that.

My version of what could be considered normalcy only lasted for so long. Mom really just couldn't stand it, and eventually gave in and took me to some shrink, complaining the whole time about how I was wasting her time and costing her money. I would have laughed at her, but it really wasn't all that funny, just a little vindictive of me.

I met with the psychologist for the first time about a month before I was supposed to go into my Junior year in high school. Mom decided that if I couldn't talk, I wouldn't be fit for normal school, ignoring the fact that other kids had been born mute and got along just fine in a normal setting. I didn't really care too much either way. For all I really cared I could never go to school again, I wasn't really a good student anyway, but that was obviously out of the question.

So I met with this doctor, and the entire conversation went a little something like this:

"Why hello there" checks clipboard "Ronald. How are you doing today?"

"..." I gave him that "damn, you just grew an extra head" stare, then stared at the desk as if the fake wood was the most fascinating thing I'd ever seen in my life.

"Is there anything you want to talk about? Your home life, your family? Your mother seems very worried about you, you know."

"..."

"Do you not believe me? I doubt you'd be here today if she wasn't"

"..." New focus point. This guy had a lot of strange pictures in his office. Just pain splatters that had been framed. I could have done that when I was five, I would have too, had I known they would end up in some guys office one day.

"Could you co-operate at all? Maybe a nod, or a shake of the head even?"

"..." I didn't answer, but I did look back at him. He was probably handsome once, but now he was just aging, fat, and balding. Pity.

"So I take it that your looking directly at me is an agreement?"

"..." I gave him a non committal shrug. He never really did anything to me. I figured I could play along at least a bit.

"Oh-ho! That's excellent! So the reason for your speechlessness, is it due to something that happened in your home?"

"..." I gave him that look again, and shrugged once more.

"I see... Could you possibly not look at me like that, it's a bit disconcerting."

"..." I shrugged and looked again at his painting. I wondered if it had some deeper psychological meaning. Or if it was just some random thing that they'd found at a yard sale.

"Do you like my painting Ronald? It's an original Jackson Pollock. A true testament to his genius." He smiled and nodded, looking fondly at that thing. I gave it my look, and wondered why anyone would consider that to be a testament to anyone's genius.

"But enough about my painting, you never did really give me a definite answer to my first question."

"..." I looked at him for a moment, and then looked down at the floor shrugging my shoulders. For someone who was supposed to be a genius at reading people, and figuring out what was wrong with them, he really wasn't very good at it.

The remaining part of the hour continued in the same way. He would ask me a question to which I would give a shrug as an answer, and then I would try to figure out why on earth he thought a framed canvas with splatters on it was considered art. Maybe he was crazy, and that was why he thought it was a good idea to talk to crazy people all day. That seemed logical.

"Well Ronald, I hope you'll be more cooperative next week, I'd hate for you to have to miss school or something because of your refusal to talk. But I'll be seeing you next week whether you decided to speak or not." He smiled at me and held out his hand for me to shake. I hadn't really expected the gesture, but shook his hand nonetheless, causing him to smile harder. I was glad that I could still make someone smile.

Mom yelled at me the entire way home of course. She yelled about how I was just wasting time and money, and about how I was just rebelling for the sake of stupid teenage rebellion. That wasn't it at all of course, but she never really understood me before, so I didn't really expect her to now.

A month passed with nothing really exciting happening. Everyday my mom would yell at me and one day a week I would go and talk to my new therapist, or he would talk, and I would shrug and stare at his painting at the very least. He was a very talkative person. He told me about his life, when I refused to tell him about mine, in hopes of getting me to want to swap stories I think. It turned out that he had a kid of his own that had died in a car crash, and that was why he wanted to work with children. I didn't really get that either, but I had given him a sympathetic look, and even gone the extra mile to smile at him while I shook his hand that day. He smiled like I had given him the best gift in the world, and I felt like I had actually done something good for a change.

The last time I met with him though,was an nonscheduled day the day before I was supposed to go back to school. He apparently had wanted to talk to both me and my mom, which in my mind couldn't have ended well, but if it was what he wanted to do then I guess I'd have to let him.

Mom complained the entire way there about how he was a quack, and that calling us in like this was completely unprofessional. I couldn't really see what she was complaining about, she was the one who had been begging him for extra sessions in order to get me to talk. It hadn't worked, as neither of us had budged, but that hadn't stopped her from trying anyway.

When we got to his office, mom complained some more about everything, and reached up to "fix" my hair, saying that I should look respectable, even if I didn't want to act it.

"Welcome Mrs. Weasley, Ronald. It's nice of you to come on such short notice, I do apologize for my lateness in calling you, but I had remembered that at the beginnings of our sessions that you had some specific questions that you wanted answered, and I thought it would be better if they were done in person, rather then over the phone."

"Its absolutely fine. It was really no big deal at all coming here on such short notice. But if you don't mind too much, I would like to know the nature of this visit, and I'm sure that Ron would as well." Mom smiled at him sweetly, laying on the charm in the face of someone she considered a stranger. It was all fake, but I'm sure he didn't know that.

"Yes, well. You asked me some questions at the start of all this. One was whether or not I could get him to speak again, which I obviously have not done, but I think that's merely due to a lack of time. Another was the reason why he was refusing to talk, something I've also not been able to figure out. But the most pertinent question you asked me, and the one that you seemed to want the answer to the soonest, was whether or not Ronald would be able to go back to school as scheduled. As far as I can tell, he would do fine in a normal school setting, but ultimately the choice rests in your hands as his legal guardian. You may choose to either send him back to his regular school, or if you do so wish, we could find him an institution wherein he would have tutors so he would still learn, but he would also be somewhere where he would be within easy reach of psychologists, and constantly people his own age. I think this is a little extreme of a solution, but as I said, the decision is yours."

Mom stayed silent for a moment, pretending to think it over heavily. I could tell she was faking it, as she didn't once change her position. She had decided long ago to go with this solution.

"Do you really think it would help?" She bit her bottom lip, trying to look like she cared, but to me, it simply looked like she was trying not to laugh.

"I do think that it may help. But it would be something that you would have to be committed to."

"Well if you think it will help, then we're going to do it." It was decided, just like that that I was going to be sent away from home. Ripped from my life, and forced to start anew. I didn't even get a chance to put a word in edgewise, not that I would have anyway.

Mom excused us from the room after getting the name of this new place, and the directions on how to get there. I was practically shoved out of the room, but I turned and gave the guy a small smile and waved goodbye.

I never did see him again.

* * *

**Ending Authors Note: **So this was chapter one. Kind of shortish, but that's the price you pay if you actually want updates from me. Sorry, sorry.

So yes, discussions, we have many of them.

As several (few) of you may know, this was originally a HPRW fic. Now I'm not so sure if I want to do that anymore. This is where all of you come in. I want to know your favorite HP pairings, and what of them you want to see in this story. If you were an original reader, and you still want to see the same things you were going to see before, then that's cool. Hit me up, and we can talk. If you are an incoming reader, and you don't want to see the same pairings, then the same goes for you. This all depends on how many suggestions I get and for what. The storyline won't really change too much, just the pairings. So HIT ME UP. I WANT TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS. No thoughts = no story. Simple fact. I should, at the very least, try to crank out one more chapter filled with yummy introductions, and other happy bullshit.

So please people. HIT ME UP. Via PM for conversation, via review for non-conversation. Reviews _and_ PMs would be excellent.

I guess that's all I have to say. Catch you on the flip side. (Huzzah for stupid outdated slang!)

Miss Moonie

BTW: Ron's thoughts on Jackson Pollock mimic mine exactly. We can talk about that too, if it brings you joy. Just freakin' hit me up. :3


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